The news that three feet of dry, light powder have fallen on our own mountains halfway across the globe should not so greatly affect our sense of purpose. And yet it does. But then it will begin to snow—right out there in the darkness beyond the window. "It appears to be snowing," Jonathan will observe. The rest of us, superstitious as sailors, will try not to acknowledge the stuff. But it will come, and keep coming...

Photo by author.ONE LATE SUMMER MORNING in the forest above Lake Tahoe, with the sun blazing and the traffic rushing by on U.S. Highway 50, I find myself crunching through dry pine-needle duff looking for wild mushrooms. Of mushrooms I know only that they come sliced or whole in my local supermarket, brown (which somehow hints of the wild and is more expensive) or white; that a particular hallucinogenic variety can be obtained on the black market for recreational purposes; and that a high percentage of those that grow in the wild will either make you very sick or kill you dead.

It took Muir and his buddy Chilwell seven weeks to reach Yosemite, drifting "leisurely mountainward by any road that [they] chanced to find; enjoying the flowers and light, 'camping out' in blankets wherever overtaken by night, and paying very little compliance to roads or times." The best we'd been able to arrange, a century and a half later, was seven days. It did seem fitting, at least, given Muir's pecuniary state in 1868, that there would be no budget for expenses.

AirTran's GO Magazine, October 2011BENEATH A VIADUCT IN DOWNTOWN SAN JOSE we met a woman who introduced herself as Pack Rat. She'd been camped at the terminus of the Guadalupe River Trail for 22 years. "You guys need anything?" she asked. "Socks? Vouchers? Food?"

I KNEW BETTER. I'd had a bear break into the trailer a couple of summers ago. I'd left the door unlocked; she'd climbed in, opened the cupboard above the fridge, cleaned it of its contents, and continued on her way. She didn't get into the fridge — that time. Or break anything. The only mess she'd left was down the hillside, on the ground: an empty marshmallow bag, scraps of cardboard from a box of graham crackers, and such—and a good dark pile of poop.